Tom Finn

What first drew you to design?

I couldn’t tell you what drew me to design in the first instance, I was lucky enough to have studied it at school at GCSE level, through BA and then MA where myself and Kristoffer met at the Royal College. But I think what made me continue at it was its constant. There’s an opportunity to do and learn something different in every project, particularly in branding. Clients themselves are often creative too, which adds to the experience – they’ve come up with a great product or a novel idea, and we get to shape how that comes into the world. For me that’s exciting and what keeps me enjoying what I do every day.

We’ve recently partnered with your studio, Regular Practice. What are the 3 elements essential to having a great collaborative relationship?

A matched level of enthusiasm – a sense that each party is not only excited about their own work, but excited about what the other is going to do.

Experience in appropriate areas, but still having room to learn and be surprised. Of course you need to know what you’re doing, but there needs to be a level of discovery in every project, whether that’s in the subject matter or an element of the execution. Otherwise the output will feel a bit done / flat.

Flexibility. Projects often go in many unplanned ways, so I think a willingness to follow the right way to do something – and not just the easiest – is important.

We’re currently working together on a naming project. Can you tell us about how you landed on your own studio name, Regular Practice?

Anyone that’s ever been involved in naming for a client knows it’s a difficult process. Naming for yourself I think is even harder. We’d recently left the RCA and It’s Nice That had offered to write about our new (unnamed) studio, so we essentially had 5 days to come up with a name and a website. In retrospect, it was a really useful deadline. We wanted to avoid the common ‘X studio’ or ‘studio X’, and we felt that using our last names – Finn and Sølling – was a bit too serious. We liked the term ‘practice’ both as a professional place of work but also a meaning of oneself’s creative practice, and ‘regular’ as a play on the idea of practising regularly.

A close runner up was Duplex Unit, which is the part of a printer that prints on both sides. Glad we went away from that one…

Which brands do you think have great design and why in your opinion do you think it works so well?

I think there’s some really exciting work in the US at the moment. One that comes straight to mind is Soft Services. I think they’ve executed a really elegant but refined expression that’s diverse and different across their products, packaging and graphic expression. Somehow they’ve managed to make every product different. Out loud that sounds like a bad idea, but they’ve still made it ownable to them.

What’s a project you’ve worked on that you’re really proud of?

Thankfully over the last few years we’ve been really busy, and I’m proud of most things we do (I know, boring answer).

One recent project that comes to mind – which is yet to launch – is a project called ARC. They’re large architectural retreats across the UK – houses reimagined by a brilliant architectural studio called Parti – and are presented as an offering with a digital experience where you can plan your week with the other people you’re staying with. Our role was to build a brand that could flex across signage, print and digital, and creative direction – as well as execute all of those elements. So it’s been a really long and complicated journey but the result is one that I’m really proud of.

We’ve got some other really exciting things coming soon too!